'START ITT' – A BESPOKE MOBILE APP FOR IMPROVING THE ORIENTATION EXPERIENCE OF FIRST YEAR THIRD LEVEL STUDENTS

Start ITT up will be a one stop hybrid app for first year IT Tallaght students. It will detail essential information for new students and will provide easy access for any student with a mobile device to induction/course... [ view full abstract ]

Start ITT up will be a one stop hybrid app for first year IT Tallaght students. It will detail essential information for new students and will provide easy access for any student with a mobile device to induction/course related material.

The app is aimed at orientating the student for their first six weeks of 3rd at the Institute. It will include floor plans, useful video tutorials, key staff roles and their contact details as well as an orientation week agenda and timetables.

As the academic year progresses it is intended to tailor the apps features to meet the students’ needs during the academic cycle. This app will be designed and delivered using a design thinking approach, which is a method of meeting people’s needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable way. Central to this design method is to use features of this app to capture the first year student’s individual registration and induction experience, and to use this data to improve these processes to meet the needs of the students, as well as updating and improving the content of the app. The developing tool for the app will also detail essential analytics such as hits per app page, types of devices that installed the app as well as number of app downloads and when it was downloaded. This information can inform further iterations to tailor the app further.

With appropriate content, the Start ITT app will increase students awareness of:
- learning, administrative and support resources to them
- instant access to crucial, Departmental information such as timetables, start dates
- Information on specific courses (electives, books and required equipment).

It is expected that by providing this information on a hand held device that the volume of queries to college administrative staff will also be reduced and course retention may increase as the app will satisfy these annual queries from students.